Throughout this application various publications are referenced, many in parenthesis. Full citations for each of these publications are provided at the end of the Detailed Description. The disclosures of each of these publications in their entireties are hereby incorporated by reference in this application.
The recent outbreak of new variant cases of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (nvCJD) in Europe (Will et al. 1996) may signal the beginning of a major world health problem. NvCJD appears to have evolved from a concurrent epidemic of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in English cattle (Brown et al. 1997). The root of the problem has been the endemic presence of scrapie in the large sheep population in Britain and the common practice of feeding sheep offal to cattle in the form of bone meal (Wilesmith et al. 1991). The indifference of scientists as to the likelihood of scrapie and subsequently BSE being potential human health risks directly led to the current threat of nvCJD in Britain. The problem is further compounded by the possibility of contamination of the blood supply by professional blood donors who eventually develop CJD, thereby providing a mechanism for even more widespread dissemination of the disease (FDA Committee 1994). It is, therefore, imperative to develop a pre-clinical screening test for the transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSE).